Iceman: Absolute Zero
by Hori
Summary: Human/mutant tension is peaking in the months following 'The Apocalypse Incident.' When an experiment at the institute goes awry, Bobby inadvertently sets off a chain of events that will come to define him, his powers, and his role as an X-Man.
1. Absolute Zero

_Extreme cold has always held a special place in our imagination. For thousands of years it seemed like a malevolent force associated with death and darkness. Cold was an unexplained phenomenon. Was it a substance? A process? ...Or some special state of being?_

_ -Tom Shachtman, Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold_

* * *

"Doctor McCoy?"

"Bobby, I think we've been working together long enough that you can just call me Henry. Or Hank."

"How about 'Doc'?"

"Only if you have a carrot to chew on when you say it."

"Okay. _Hank._ Are we almost done?"

"Why?"

"I really have to pee."

Doctor McCoy, the Beast, turned his hulking, fur-covered body to face Bobby Drake and regarded him for a moment. He removed his spectacles, which seemed comically small in his gigantic, clawed hands, and wiped them on a corner of his white lab coat before returning them to their usual perch on the bridge of his nose. He removed a pen from his breast pocket, making a notation in his pad of looseleaf paper, which contained a variety of jotted notes and equations that looked to Bobby like little more than a collection of tiny scribbles.

"Curious," he said, rubbing the rough blue fur of his chin with a huge knuckle, "You still experience the need for basic bodily functions in your organic-cryonic state?"

Bobby sighed, a large puff of vapor exiting his mouth as the super-cooled air in his lungs met the balmy temperature of the subterranean laboratory beneath the mansion. He liked the Doctor, or rather, _Hank_, well enough, but his way of complicating his language was exhausting to say the least. Before this, Bobby had always referred to his mutant transformation as his 'ice form,' or just 'icing'. With Doctor McCoy, it was all thermodynamics and cryonics and sub-zero-whatevers.

"Yes," he said finally, grinning wryly "I still have to pee when I do this." He gestured to his torso, which shimmered in its near-translucent ice state, the air around his body actually distorting from the extreme cold, rippling as the ambient moisture encountered the sub-zero chill. White, heavy vapor plumed off of his form and crept lazily off the examination table like dry ice, slowly dissipating into nothing before it could hit the polymer floor.

Again, Hank studied him for a silent moment before making another note in his pad. "And it doesn't come out..?"

"What? As yellow snow?" Bobby chuckled, "No, not usually."

"Fascinating," Hank mused, more to himself than to Bobby. He seemed momentarily lost in thought before the present returned to him, and he replaced the pen grasped in his ape-like hand back into the lab coat. "In any case, I am nearly finished, Bobby. I'd like you to try for another ten degrees if you could."

Again, Bobby sighed and looked down at himself, laid prone on the laboratory's examination table, every manner of monitoring device attached to him, most sheathed in several layers of insulation to keep the various instruments from frosting over and snapping in the cold.

For the past couple weeks, Doctor McCoy had commandeered him, with Professor Xavier's consent, into becoming what Bobby was fairly certain constituted as a lab rat, or, at the very least, an indentured servant. Doctor McCoy had recently begun what he referred to as an 'authoritative omnibus' on the unusual and under-studied physics related to mutant powers, and somehow Bobby's ability to manipulate temperature and moisture had placed him at the top of the list of mandatory volunteers.

It wasn't the worst way to spend the beginning of his summer, in fact, in some ways it was downright relaxing after the ordeal of Apocalypse from the past year, but it was pretty close. It wasn't a total loss though. At least this way, Bobby had an excuse to get out of household chores, which was a requirement of staying at the mansion during the long vacation without at least a part time job. Just this morning he had passed Kitty and Rogue on his way to the lab, who both glowered at him as he winked and shot them 'double guns' with his index fingers as they mopped and scrubbed the floor of the kitchen.

"Okay," Bobby said, "Ten degrees. Here goes nothing."

Bobby looked at the digital readout near Doctor McCoy's desk, which in turn was connected to the half dozen variety of instruments that had been connected to him at various points on his body. For the past five minutes or so, it had read a steady one-hundred-and-twenty degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. Without putting any effort into it, Bobby's usual temperature in his ice form usually hovered somewhere around eighty below, but Doctor McCoy seemed more and more interested in how low Bobby could push it.

It really wasn't all that difficult. Bobby simply set his jaw, narrowed his eyes, and commanded himself with one simple word: _Colder._

Bobby and Doctor McCoy both watched in silence as the numbers on the readout steadily clicked higher. ...Or rather, lower. In under a minute, the numbers stopped at exactly one-hundred-and-thirty. Bobby was grateful that, while his surface temperature was now so cold that it would likely strip flesh from a person's hand if they were to touch him, his ice form did not emanate cold beyond a few inches from his body, so Doctor McCoy was in no immediate danger of freezing.

Despite the rather sizable dip in temperature (this was in fact that coldest that Bobby had ever attempted to make himself), the only difference that Bobby noticed was not any alteration in physical sensation, but rather a cosmetic one; Where his body was usually a smooth plane of crackling ice, icicles had begun to sprout from odd angles at his joints, where the extreme cold had begun to coax the ambient moisture around him to form rigid spikes that sprouted from him like coral reef.

Doctor McCoy made another note on his pad of paper and chuckled. "I'll call Guinness," he said.

"Huh?"

"You, my young friend," Doctor McCoy gave a crooked smile, one of his long lower canines protruding from his bottom lip, "Are officially the location of the coldest naturally-occurring temperature in recorded history. 'Natural' being a subjective term, of course."

Bobby cocked an eyebrow, which popped and crackled as the super-cooled, organic ice that made up his face thawed, melted, and refroze in the space of a heartbeat to allow for the movement. Then, without knowing exactly why, he found himself laughing too.

"I'm not even trying that hard," he admitted, grinning with transparent, icy teeth.

Doctor McCoy let out a single note of a chuckle, more of an amicable grunt really, and again rubbed the coarse hair under his chin.

"You do realized, Mr Drake," he said, "How incredible what you're doing right now is, don't you?"

Bobby frowned and, for once not having anything to say, shrugged.

Doctor McCoy pulled up his stool and perched himself on it, his large feet gripping it like an extra set of hands. He opened up his notepad and began leafing through it with the claw of his index finger, while at the same time tapping himself on the bottom lip with his ever-present pen.

"This is exactly why I'm doing this study," the blue giant of a man said excitedly, "The sheer number of thermodynamic laws that you're in violation of right now is staggering. I could spend an entire lifetime just trying to figure out how you're able to maintain higher brain functions when CT and MRI scans show that the entire contents of your cranium is frozen solid. Even the fact that you can... _heed the call of nature_ when the rest of your body is composed almost entirely of ice is, if you'll forgive me, one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard of."

Bobby smiled. "Well, you're just going to have to take my word for it, because I've got a really shy bladder."

Doctor McCoy chuckled again and finally closed his notepad, turning for the door of the lab. "We're just about done if you'd like to power down. I'll be back in a snap."

Bobby watched Hank leave, and was about to do just as the Doctor suggested, but something stopped him. He looked again at the digital readout that still displayed a steady one-hundred-and-thirty degrees below zero. He took stock of himself, mentally and physically, and found that, despite having to concentrate slightly, he was feeling no ill effects from pushing his body temperature ever lower. He supposed there wouldn't be any harm in trying to go for broke.

How cold could he go, anyway? It surprised him that he had no idea whatsoever.

It wasn't as though Doctor McCoy wasn't going to ask him to do that exact thing tomorrow, in any case. Bobby was fairly confident that the only reason he wasn't asking now was out of concern for Bobby's safety, asking him too much in too short a time. In an odd way, Bobby felt bad that he was, as far as he was concerned, wasting Doctor McCoy's time. He clearly wanted data. And the sooner he could get it, the better. Besides, the sooner Hank had everything he needed to summarize Bobby's abilities in a dissertation paper, the sooner Bobby could spend the rest of the summer doing... Well, not this.

_Why not? _he thought to himself, flexing his fingers, _Let's do it._

Bobby closed his eyes, and again focused on that one single idea: _Colder._

The first thing Bobby noticed as his temperature began to drop even further was the noise. It was like the crackling of static electricity, except, he quickly realized, it was actually individual molecules of moisture in the air around him snap-freezing as they made contact with the super-cooled air around his body. The air around him began to actually shimmer and glisten as, in a chain reaction, the water in the atmosphere began to crystalize all throughout the laboratory.

The digital readout began to record the dropping temperature of Bobby's body, slowly at first, then picking up speed. He was fast approaching negative two-hundred degrees.

_Come on, _he though, strangely giddy from the exertion, _Let's do it!_

The digital readout displayed negative two-hundred and fifty degrees, and was still falling.

Since his powers had first manifested, Bobby had always assumed there was something, some mysterious wall of cellular fire that prevented the parts of his body that were still organic from freezing over, that protected him from succumbing to the cold the way that every other warm-blooded creature did. As his temperature continued to drop, however, doubt began to enter his mind. Deep in the pit of his stomach, he began to feel, really _feel_ coldness in a way that he had not experienced since he was a child, before his powers manifested. True, it was not all that long ago, but nevertheless, the sensation had become almost completely alien to him. It was oddly thrilling to feel it again.

Bobby was surprised by a sudden snap and jolt beneath him, and, looking down, saw that the examination table had cracked completely in half under him, warped and twisted by the extreme temperature he was subjecting it to. He laughed, amazed by the spectacle of it, and suddenly very aware that he was probably going to be in a lot of trouble for destroying the expensive piece of laboratory equipment.

_Okay_, he though,_ That's enough_.

Bobby began to relax then, and threw the mental switch in his mind that deactivated his powers. If that wasn't enough to serve Doctor McCoy's needs, he didn't know what else he could possibly offer.

Several seconds passed before he began to realize that something was wrong. He craned his neck to look at the digital readout.

It read negative three-hundred degrees, and continued to steadily fall.

Bobby swallowed, and squeezed his eyes shut, once again exercising the mental muscle that he had always relied on to control his ability to harness the cold. And once again, the cold would not be harnessed. The place in his stomach where the chilly sensation had first began to take hold was growing now into a true knot of discomfort, spreading into his chest and shoulders.

For the first time in years, Bobby Drake shuddered. For the first time in years, he felt ice crawl into his blood, chilling him to the core.

"Okay," Bobby said aloud. Speaking to himself was a habit he'd picked up from a young age, and it still manifested in times of tension or anxiety. "I'm starting to get a little worried here."

Bobby tried to sit up, and was shocked by the effort it required. His icy body, usually as pliant as any normal person's warm flesh, seemed hard and dense as stone, cracking loudly in protest as he raised himself up. Many of the instruments that Hank had attached to him, despite their layers of high-tech insulation, had frozen completely solid, and shattered into pieces as he moved. He was covered from head to toe in wickedly sharp spikes of ice that jutted from his body at all angles, forming crystalline patterns that were both hard and delicate, like the arms of snowflakes.

Bobby glanced again at the readout. Negative three-hundred and seventy-five.

Everything he touched was frozen in the space of seconds, forming ice crystals around his fingers. Every movement seemed to take more of his strength than the last.

"Bobby Drake," he said, and found that even his lips had begun to ice over, making his speech slow and thick, "World's first voluntary popsicle."

The cold in his abdomen had spread almost everywhere, and numbness, another sensation that Bobby had practically forgotten about, began creeping into his hands and feet. He could not be sure, but his vision might be going dark as well.

The readout displayed negative four-hundred and twenty-five.

Breathing suddenly became very difficult, and Bobby was just aware enough to deduce that the internal temperature of his lungs was becoming too cold for oxygen to properly exchange into his body. Despite the extreme chill he felt, he was beginning to feel very tired, like he might want to lie down. That didn't seem like such a bad thing. Though he was aware that this was the exact line of reasoning that people suffering from hypothermia followed. Still... He was so tired.

"Crap," Bobby managed, before he collapsed back down onto the cracked and frozen examination table, which promptly shattered beneath him.

"Bobby? ...Bobby?"

"I think he's comin' around, Hank."

"Get me another shot ready, just in case."

The first thing Bobby was aware of was a deep soreness in his chest. The second thing was that he wasn't dead. Which was a relief.

"Bobby," he heard Doctor McCoy's voice, what seemed like miles away, "Bobby, you need to wake up. Stay with us, now. Come on, lad."

His vision returned to him in a flood, but for several seconds, Bobby could not make heads or tails of what he saw. It dawned on him that he was no longer in Hank's examination room, but rather had been moved to the rehab center. It took him another ten seconds to understand that he was submerged up to his stomach in a warm vat of slightly viscous amber-colored liquid that churned like a jacuzzi, its warm current swirling around him, slowly taking the chill out of his bones. That didn't change the fact that it felt like he was sitting in a tub of lukewarm snot.

"Oh gross," Bobby croaked, lifting a goo-covered hand out of the sludge.

He felt a rough hand clap his shoulder, and Bobby turned to see Logan standing behind the tub.

"Try not to move, kid, that stuff is keeping you from turning into the blizzard of '77 again," he said. It was only then that Bobby spotted the absolutely monstrous syringe that the muscled, older man held in his other hand. Though he did not want to, Bobby looked down at his chest, where the strong, aching sensation still pulsed in his breastbone.

"Oh," was all he could manage. He never exactly thought of what he would plan on saying when he was confronted with the sight of medical equipment that had been stuck deeply securely into his chest. He raised his hands up to the device, ready to yank it from his body out of pure horrified instinct, but a massive, blue-furred hand reached out to stop him.

"It's best you let me do it," Hank said, then turning to Logan, "I don't think we're going to need that."

Logan shrugged and placed the syringe haphazardly on the nearest surface, seemingly relieved to be excused from any medical responsibility.

"What happened?" Bobby asked, shuddering as Doctor McCoy withdrew the absurdly long needle from his chest.

"I was hoping you could tell me," the blue-furred mutant frowned, "I left for five minutes, and when I came back, my lab looked like christmas from hell, and you were nearly frozen solid, which is a pretty impressive feat considering that being frozen is practically your natural state. We had to submerge you in thermodynamically super-charged solution and inject your heart twice to get it beating again."

Bobby shook his head, trying to make sense of the hazy memories that had formed in the moments before he lost consciousness.

"I was trying to see how cold I could go," he recalled, suddenly very aware of how stupid that idea sounded out loud.

"Yeah, no kidding," Logan grunted, "Hank had to get me to carve you off the table and carry you here. Took most of my hands with you."

Logan flexed the muscles of his palms and fingers, working them open and closed, and Bobby could not help but notice that the skin there was pink, shiny, and recently healed.

"Ouch," he winced, "Sorry."

Logan waved a hand dismissively as he walked to the rehab room's exit, the sliding doors hissing as he approached, "Forget it, ice cube. I'll see you for your training session tomorrow."

Bobby gulped and exchanged glances with Doctor McCoy, "He's mad."

"Undoubtedly," Hank said mildly, "Now, tell me more about what happened."

It was only then that Bobby took note of just how tense, how shaken the Doctor was. He was doing an apt job of hiding it, not doubt for Bobby's own benefit, so as not to upset him. Nevertheless, Bobby had always been adept at detecting discomfort in people around him, and the Beast was only just keeping it together. Whatever had occurred in the lab, it was serious. Whatever had happened in the lab had been, to Doctor McCoy anyway, frightening.

_Well, he did just tell you that your heart stopped._

Bobby finally shrugged, "There's not much to it. I guess when I get to a certain temperature, it gets harder to turn back. I just kept getting colder and then... passed out."

"Bobby, you didn't just pass out. Logan and I were not exaggerating when we told you we found you frozen."

A moment passed, and Doctor McCoy removed his glasses, staring at him intently. "You really don't realize what you did, do you?"

Bobby shrugged for a second time.

Hank reached into his pad of loose paper and produced a sheet of computer paper, a series of numbers and figured etched onto its surface.

"This is the data of your internal temperature leading up to... your episode. Before my equipment turned into glorified icicles, this was the last figure that was recorded."

The Doctor pointed a clawed finger at a number on the print out. Bobby squinted to make out the small print.

"Negative four-hundred and fifty-five point four degrees," he read, then looked at Hank, "So?"

Doctor McCoy stared at him for a moment, then rubbed his head. "The things they don't teach you in that high school... Bobby, negative four-hundred and fifty-five is just four degrees above absolute zero. You managed to make your body as cold as the deepest, coldest depths of deep space _by accident._ I couldn't replicate what you did with ten years of research and a bottomless pit of grant money."

"So why did I pass out?"

"Again, you didn't pass out, Bobby," Doctor McCoy removed his glasses and set about cleaning them, "Absolute zero is, as far as modern science is concerned, a temperature that is impossible to actually achieve, because it is a theoretical circumstance at which entropy ceases. At temperatures nearing real, true absolute zero, atoms, simply put, start forgetting how to function properly. They slow down, melt together, and start creating new forms of matter that are neither solid nor liquid nor gas. In short, once you start approaching absolute zero, atoms stop moving. They stop _being_, at a natural level. You start entering the world of quantum mechanics, Bobby. You lost consciousness because the atoms in your brain were physically changing into what is referred to as Bose-Einstein condensation; a condition that has only been replicated in some of the finest research labs in the world."

Bobby sat in the warm goo of the recovery tub for a long moment as this information sank in.

_Here I was thinking that physics lessons were still a few months away._

"So what now?"

"Well," Hank said, "For starters we can consider our testing officially suspended. Professor Xavier and I agree that you should be monitored regularly for a period of roughly two weeks for any residual effects. Your parents have been informed that you had a mishap with your abilities, and after they calmed down, they concurred that the best option was for you to remain here under my supervision. Other than that, I'll need to give you a basic physical to make sure everything is right as rain, but I think you'll be fine. So long as you don't try something that foolish again."

Bobby groaned, "Two weeks of monitoring. That means..."

"Two weeks confined to the mansion, yes."

"Oh, weeaaak..."

Suddenly, mornings spent laying on a laboratory table didn't seem so bad after all.


	2. Liberation

_**Hello readers,**_

_**First off, yes, Sons of Logan will be finished and I'm still working on it. What can I say, it's gotten more and more dense as I've gone on, and sometimes getting chapters out is a real exercise in balancing timelines and POVs.  
**_

_**Secondly, hey! More Frozen Summer! I started writing more of this as a sort of vacation from other projects. The chapters will most likely be similarly as short as these, as the material is thus far still pretty 'slice-of-life' and casual. Hope you enjoy it.  
**_

_**Hori out.  
**_

Bobby did not bother to knock on the thick oak frame the led to Doctor McCoy's office. The Doctor's ears were sharper and nose keener than any normal human, and unless he was particularly distracted under a mountain of paperwork or half a dozen computer screens, he was usually more than aware of anyone stepping into his threshold. As it was, it seemed as though the Beast was spending a rare moment of spare time relaxing, if that's what one would call it; The giant of a man had perched himself on top of his book shelf, a ponderous leather-bound tome open and grasped in his claws, his spectacles pinching the end of his nose as he scanned the page.

Bobby contented himself with leaning against the doorway, producing his phone from his pocket and opening the time and calendar application with a swipe of his fingers across its glass surface. On the face of the phone, a set of numbers had been counting down for the past two weeks, and now the numbers had finally ticked down to mere seconds.

_Almost free, _Bobby thrilled as he watched the time melt away.

_Three..._

_Two..._

_One..._

Bobby opened his mouth, about to proclaim his liberation from his house arrest.

"That makes two weeks on the button, Bobby," Doctor McCoy said, not glancing up from his book, "_Time is very slow for those who wait._"

Bobby frowned. "Huh?" was all that he could manage.

Hank snapped the large book closed with a thump and held it up, though Bobby could make nothing out on the cover, small as the title had been printed.

"Shakespeare," he grinned, his large bottom canines poking out from between his blue lips. He hopped down from the book shelf, making less noise than seemed possible, given the man's size and weight.

Putting his phone away, Bobby asked, "How did you do that?"

The Doctor rolled his eyes theatrically, "You're not the only one who can look at a clock, dear boy."

The blue-furred man left his book on his desk as he knuckle-walked towards Bobby. The first time Bobby had seen him do that, watching the pounds upon pounds of thick, bulging muscle ripple and quake across Doctor McCoy's arms as he swung his weight forward, bracing on his hands, gripping the floor with feet that more resembled gigantic hands, it had scared the living daylights out of him, ignited a strange, primal fear deep in his subconscious that was keyed in to view anything unusual as a threat. Now, he barely noticed it.

"Let me have a look at you," Hank said, pushing his glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose as he rose to his full, un-hunched height so that he was now looking down on Bobby. He placed fingers on Bobby's wrists, felt his pulse, felt the glands beneath his ears on either side of his neck, and produced a pen light from his front pocket, shining it into Bobby's eyes, moving it back and forth.

"Sleeping well?" Doctor McCoy asked, adopting the slightly distanced tone that he usually employed when performing any task related to his position as an impromptu physician at the Xavier Institute, "No more... Latent effects?"

Bobby winced at the memory. For three straight nights after his freezing incident, he had woken each morning with his entire room coated in a thick layer of frost, which Bobby could not recall ever having conjured. Thankfully, his roommates Ray and Sam had gone home for the summer, and all that had damaged was the wallpaper and his own possessions. Nevertheless, Bobby's control over his powers had always come rather easily ever since they'd manifested, and the past two weeks' lingering doubts had made him more tense than he liked to admit.

"Nothing to report," Bobby answered with a levity that was only half genuine, "Ready to get back out into the world, Doc."

It was little more than a pithy attempt at being coy, but Bobby could practically feel the walls of the mansion closing in on him. It was almost a certainty that the other students who remained at the mansion during the summer had noticed his rather cloudy mood. Combined with his house arrest, his absence from training, the teachers' silence, and Bobby's unwillingness to divulge information as to the cause, the grounds had become a veritable whirlwind of gossip. It was bad enough that everyone else's summer plans were in full swing, leaving Bobby watching from his room as scores of the students departed for outings to the beach or downtown Bayville, or the nearby water park, but watching them turn and glance up at his window as they departed was downright infuriating. Nonetheless, admitting that he had nearly killed himself with his own mutant abilities, his control of which had always been a point of pride, was too much to bear, so he had kept silent, as per Professor Xavier's request. Doctor McCoy's experiments had also been put on hold, meaning that no other student was privy to the exact nature of what Bobby and the Beast had been up to that had made the teachers so tight-lipped.

Piled on top of all of that, Hank had expressly forbidden Bobby from exerting himself, which meant no danger room sessions, and no usage of his powers. They may as well have rescinded his status as an X-Man.

"It's been a long two weeks, I know," Doctor McCoy mused, as though he had read Bobby's mind. He grasped Bobby's wrists in his huge paws, turning his hands, inspecting them, but for what, Bobby could not guess. Finally, Hank let them drop and took a step back, looking Bobby up and down.

After a long moment, he shrugged, reached into his breast pocket, pulled out his small note pad and scribbled something in its pages.

"You look fine to me," he said, waving a hand at Bobby, "Get out of here, my boy. Get some fresh air. Go buy something at the shopping mall. Just please take it easy for a while longer."

If Doctor McCoy had said anything else, Bobby didn't hear it. He was down the hallway like a shot, his sneakers pounding on the wooden floor and echoing off the walls as he bounded towards the front door of the mansion, already feeling the molecules of moisture in the air rushing towards him like iron to a magnet. As he pushed open the heavy door of the mansion's threshold, he felt his body grow blissfully cold as his skin snap-froze into his signature organic ice form. All around him beams of light shot out and played along the lawn and stone steps as they bounced off of the reflective surface of his hair and face.

"I'm back, baby!" he shouted triumphantly, pumping both frozen fists into the air, feeling hyper-charged and fully alive for the first time in three hundred and thirty six long hours.

Before he had time to even form the thought fully in his head, an ice ramp was already crystalizing under his feet. Smiling, Bobby put both hands out in front of his body, and began to churn out ice like a ski resort snow machine. As he created more of the ramp, his feet began to slide forward on the slick surface, and before he knew it, he was cruising at nearly top speed through the mansion grounds, with no particular destination in mind. He whooped and shouted in sheer exuberance as he slid and surfed over the ramp that he generated through sheer force of will.

Sometimes, very rarely, being a mutant was the best thing Bobby Drake could have ever hoped for. He made turns, loops, and straightaways through every bare patch of lawn the grounds had to offer, creating a system of curves and bends that was more complicated than a remote-control car track. How much time passed, Bobby did not know or care.

The sound of a car horn stopped him abruptly, his ramp halting and descending gracefully to the grass where Bobby could hop off. In the driveway was Scott, sitting behind the wheel of his red convertible. Kitty, Rogue, and Kurt occupied the remaining seats. In front of Scott's car, blocking his path completely, was a section of Bobby's ice ramp.

"I thought your ice-making days were done," Scott grinned, obviously more than aware of Bobby's absenteeism from the training exercises of the past two weeks, "I guess that was too much to hope for."

"We've got one more spot open," Kitty patted the seat between her and Kurt in the back of the car, grinning, then glancing back at the facade of the mansion. "If you, like, have the permission of the wardens to leave, that is."

"Oh my god, this day keeps getting better!" Bobby smiled, having expected to take a bus into downtown Bayville to get his first tastes of summer freedom. Suddenly, he stopped, "I'm not taking Jean's spot or anything, am I?"

"Nah," Scott said, "She and the Professor have some kind of meditation session happening. Usually takes all day. Get in."

Bobby stepped forward and placed a hand on the rear door of the sports car, ready to jump over Kitty and take his place in the middle seat, when Scott's fingers closed around his arm abruptly.

"Whoa there, kemosabe," Scott admonished, "No ice on the upholstery, you dig?"

At first, Bobby did not understand, but when he looked down and saw an icy arm and fist protruding from his t-shirt rather than flesh and blood, he laughed.

"My bad," he laughed, and flipped the mental switch in his head that would de-ice his flesh.

A long moment passed.

"Anytime now, Iceman," Kurt said, grinning.

Bobby looked down at his hands, still glistening and transparent in their icy state.

"Yeah," he said, perplexed, "Just a sec."

Bobby felt a tightness in his chest, both from effort and a growing self-consciousness, as he reached deep inside his mind and insisted, _demanded_, that his powers obey him.

_What the hell..._

"Oh mah gawd, Bobby," Rogue looked up snarling from the book she'd been burying her nose in, "Hurry up. This ain't funny, and we're already late to meet Jubilee an' Roberto."

Bobby clenched his fists and reflexively stomped one foot into the blacktop of the driveway. With an abrupt snap and crackle, his ice form melted away. His relief manifested itself in a long sigh that escaped his mouth between his teeth.

He looked up and found all four fellow X-Men staring at him, varying degrees of curiosity and confusion etched on their faces.

"Been awhile," Bobby chuckled, waving a hand in the air as though to sweep the moment of awkwardness aside, hopping into the car between Kitty and Kurt, "Hank's been keeping me on the down low."

"Yeah," Rogue muttered, her eyes returning to her novel, "Logan's been downright ornery that his favorite ice cube got withdrawn from his summer training circuit."

"_'Hank'_?" Scott asked, glancing back.

Kurt and Kitty both withdrew to either side of the vehicle as Bobby settled in.

"Jeez, Bobby," Kitty frowned, rubbing her shoulder where he had grazed against her, "It's summer, I try not to feel this cold until the seasons force it on me."

"Ja, dude," Kurt agreed, practically shivering as he withdrew from Bobby's proximity, "Take it easy."

"Sorry," Bobby grinned, masking his concern as he struggled to bring his body temperature back up to normal human levels. Nevertheless, his breath still left his body in a white puff of vapor. "Just thought you guys might be a little warm out here."

_What's going on here?_ he thought, _Get a grip, Drake._

Somewhere deep in his chest, it felt as though a large ice cube had been deposited, dense and freezing cold. Bobby fought the urge to rub his torso through his shirt, and instead focused on his control over his own body heat, which was usually so simple it did not require any thought whatsoever. Finally, his internal temperature seemed to normalize, the frozen gap near his heart melted away, and Bobby could finally feel the warmth of the sun that beat down on him.

Bobby dismissed the entire issue as a simple kink in mental clockwork that had not been properly exercised since his episode. Wasn't Professor Xavier always saying that their mutant abilities were no different from any other muscle? He supposed he would have had similar issues with walking if he had been forbidden from using his legs for an extended period of time.

Still... There was something unsettling about the deep sense of cold he felt waning in his guts. It felt... angry?

Bobby shook his head slightly, clearing the thought away, "Hey Scott, are we going or what?"

"I'd love to, Bobby," the older boy replied, "I'm just debating if I should lay into you more for blocking the driveway."

Bobby's ice ramp still loomed ahead of them, melting quickly in the summer heat, but not nearly fast enough to be considered prudent.

"How about we chalk it all up to a child-like sense of excitement and adventure?" Bobby laughed, still trying hard to put humor in his voice that he did not necessarily feel.

"Oh relax, Scott," Kitty chided, slapping a hand on the side panel of the car, "Just get going."

Scott shrugged, put the idling car in gear, and drove straight at the massive ice structure. Even though Bobby had become increasingly familiar with Kitty's phasing abilities, he still felt a thrill of anxiety as the vehicle barreled into the mass of frozen water. The sports car, then their own physical bodies seemed to dissipate into nothing as their molecules slid through the solid form as though it did not exist. For a moment, Bobby wondered what would happen if he broke physical contact from the car, and therefore Kitty's mutant power, while he was still inside the ice. He found that the idea spooked him more than he would have guessed, and pushed it from his mind.

* * *

"So, Bobby, what's been up with you lately?" Kitty asked, her voice slightly elevated to be heard over the rush of wind that passed through the open convertible top of the car. Quickly after she asked, however, she raised her hands as though surrendering, "I mean, I don't want to pry or anything. I don't even care. It's just... I... Rogue has been wondering."

"False," Rogue chimed in her Southern drawl from the passenger seat, not lifting her gaze from the pages of her book, "Not mah business. Ah do not care."

"We _have_ been wondering," Scott said, "The mansion has been a cold and dreary place without your constant terrible jokes. Relatively speaking."

"I try to pick of ze slack," Kurt smirked, "But I am just one incredibly funny and handsome dude."

Bobby sighed inwardly. He supposed it was too much to hope for that the entire two weeks could be swept under the rug. Still, while he was certainly not inclined to lie outright to his friends and teammates, he didn't need to reveal the whole embarrassing truth.

"Hank had me helping-"

"Again with the _Hank_ thing," Scott interrupted, "Who else calls Doctor McCoy 'Hank'? Am I out of the loop?"

"Scott, quiet!" Kitty snapped, clearly hungry for any gossip that Bobby might be willing to divulge, "He's, like, trying to talk!"

"I was helping with some lab work as a summer job," Bobby said, glazing over the pertinent details, "I was goofing around and ended up freezing his um... His laboratory."

There was a long pause. Kitty stared at him expectantly, a sudden expression of distress crossing her face.

"And?"

"Well, I got read the riot act by Hank and the Professor," Bobby said, the half-lie coming easily to him now, "The whole nine yards. They called my parents, then I got reamed by them too. Then they told me I was under house arrest for two weeks. No fun, no activities, no training sessions, and no using my powers. Which was sort of bogus, but seeing as how that's how I wrecked the lab in the first place, I guess I can see the point."

"That's it?" Kitty said, badly hiding her disappointment.

"How much damage did you do, exactly?" Kurt asked.

Bobby made a face and rubbed the back of his neck. "We're talking total destruction."

Kurt whistled. "Wow. I can't even imagine Doctor McCoy's reaction. I've never seen him mad, I don't think."

"Explains why none of us could go down there for a few days," Rogue mused absently.

"But you're a free man now!" Kurt punched Bobby's shoulder good-naturedly, "Still plenty of summer left, mein freund."

"I hear ya," Bobby smiled, leaning back into the car's bucket seats and letting the breeze play through his short blonde hair, "I hear ya."

Still, Bobby could not help but notice the distinct chill that still pumped through his blood stream. As casually as he could manage, he put one hand between his knees, out of sight of Kurt and Kitty, and looked down. The tips of his fingers were covered in a thin, even layer of frost. Bobby frowned and rubbed his hand against the leg of his pants. The frost crumbled and fell to the upholstery on the floor of the car, melting in seconds, and disappearing from sight.


	3. Iced Coffee

_Absolute zero is, as far as modern science is concerned, a temperature that is impossible to actually achieve, because it is a theoretical circumstance at which entropy ceases. At temperatures nearing real, true absolute zero, atoms, simply put, start forgetting how to function properly. They slow down, melt together, and start creating new forms of matter that are neither solid nor liquid nor gas. In short, once you start approaching absolute zero, atoms stop moving. They stop _being_, at a natural level. You start entering the world of quantum mechanics, Bobby. You lost consciousness because the atoms in your brain were physically changing into what is referred to as Bose-Einstein condensation..._

_Absolute zero..._

_Absolute-_

"Excuse me? Hello?"

"Huh?" Bobby blinked twice, a fraction longer than normal, as his train of thought returned to the present, his idle, apparently encompassing thoughts popping like a soap bubble, already dissipating into the back of his mind like a wisp of clouds in an otherwise clear sky.

The barista, a girl maybe one or two years older than Bobby if he had to guess, raised her eyebrows expectantly, her fingers poised over the cash register she was manning.

Bobby looked around, suddenly very aware that he had been standing there, frozen, so to speak, for at least ten seconds while the line of people behind him had waited for him to place an order. He had been the last of the group of Xavier students in line, so Scott, Rogue, Kitty, Kurt, Jubilee, and Roberto all stood at the far corner of the coffee shop's long counter, simultaneously waiting for their own food or drink items and staring at him with bemused impatience.

"Earth to Bobby," Jubilee called out, smirking.

Bobby shook his head, as though clearing it of dust, and stepped forward, putting his fingertips on the black faux-granite counter and drumming them idly.

"Um..." he pursed his lips, looking up at the expansive menu of coffee and tea-related drinks, then at the young barista, who seemed to have a lower opinion of him with every moment that he delayed. He looked at the front of her shirt, searching for a slender plastic tag affixed there that would tell him her name. He couldn't find one, and then remembered that the employees at Bayville's small, locally-owned coffee house didn't require their employees to wear them, unlike the larger, corporate chains. Then he realized that, in addition to holding up the line, he was now staring searchingly at the young barista's chest.

She had noticed, and offered him a wilting gaze. "If you need a minute, I can take the order of the person behind you." She said the words tonelessly, with a practice neutrality that said, _I'm growing to resent you, but I am required to tolerate the fact that you exist._

"I... uh..." Bobby felt his neck and cheeks getting hot, and his scalp started to itch from the social anxiety he was beginning to feel. What was wrong with him?

"I'm sorry," he finally said, looking at the girl in the eyes now. "What's your name?"

The barista seemed to want to roll her eyes, but realized quickly that the gesture was too rude, even for a customer who was holding up the line, and instead simply directed her gaze towards the ceiling for a brief moment, as though searching for the answer there, before exhaling slowly through her nose.

"Lacey," she said finally, offering an ingenuine but not entirely spiteful smile.

"Lacey," Bobby said, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the counter, resting his chin in his hands, "I'm having kind of a weird day. I haven't gotten out in awhile and I'm still knocking off the cobwebs, socially speaking. I'm sorry I'm acting like a creep. Could you just give me a large version of whatever drink is your favorite?"

The girl's face seemed to soften, maybe a single percent, and she began typing into the register.

"Seven-fifty," she said.

"Aren't you gonna tell me what I just ordered?"

She looked at him incredulously, then gave a sly grin. "That's for you to find out, creeper. Seven-fifty."

Bobby smiled and fished into his pocket, found his wallet, and opened it. He was surprised when the usual snap of the button clasp unfastening was accompanied by a harsh series of crackles. He looked down and saw a thin sheen of frost had covered the wallet and everything inside. Vapor rose up from inside as the super-cooled air particles met the balmy temperature of the coffee shop.

_What the hell?_

Lacey raised an eyebrow as she looked at his frosted collection of bills. "I think you took the phrase, 'cold hard cash' a tad too literally."

Bobby faltered, looked up, and felt his mouth unwittingly curl up into a smirk. _Did I just get zinged by a cute barista?_

She _was_ cute. It was as though Bobby's earlier stress had blocked him from actually appreciating it. Her contempt for his indecisiveness seemed to be slowly eroding, and she offered him a small sort of half smile and tucked her dark, almost purple-tinged brown hair behind her ear.

Bobby pried a ten dollar bill from the fold of his wallet, shook it roughly to get any frost off, and handed it to her.

"My friends are..." he jerked an explanatory thumb towards his companions, who had already had their drinks made by the other working baristas, and now sat at a nearby table, "They're big on the practical jokes."

"That explains the shirt," Lacey said, frowning and eyeing his clothing as she took the near-frozen bill from him and began to make change.

Bobby frowned and looked down. His shirt? It was a blue rugby-style number. Nothing unusual or special about it. It's lack of any sort of frills was exactly what he liked about it.

"What about my..." he began, then stopped and looked up at her, raising a bemused eyebrow. "You're messing with me now, right?"

"Maybe," Lacey grinned, holding out her hand to give him his two dollars and two quarters. "You're kind of an easy target. You seem a little distracted."

"That's one word for it," Bobby shrugged. Then, shaking his head slightly, he pushed her hand back. "Keep it."

She tilted her hand into an open coffee tin on the counter labeled 'tips,' the coins hitting noisily on the bottom. "Thanks, frosty." She smiled at him, and for the first time it did not seem forced or sarcastic.

The nickname was so familiar to Bobby from other Xavier students that at first he had no reaction to it. Then, for a moment, he worried that she somehow had discerned his mutant ability from the frost-covered wallet. But no, she was just being playfully mocking.

_Ask her out_, a voice in his head urged.

_Why?_ the other side responded. _I'm not that kind of guy. I don't just ask random girls I don't know on dates._

_You've been locked up in the mansion for two weeks wasting your summer. Even if she says no, just go for it!_

Bobby shrugged inwardly. What was the worst thing that could happen? She'd say no? He'd been shut down before.

"Hey, I was just wondering, do you think you'd like to-"

"Venti double caramel macchiato with whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles." Another, older barista at the far end of the counter sounded off, looking down at Bobby expectantly, the hot, steaming beverage in hand.

Bobby felt his cheeks get hot again as Kurt erupted into laughter from the table he shared with the other X-Men as he overheard the order. Bobby looked at Lacey, who grinned sardonically.

"That's your favorite drink?" he asked.

"Oh, I love it. I drink it all the time," she replied in a tone that said she did nothing of the sort. She had ordered it for him with the express purpose of humiliating him.

Bobby found that he was liking this girl more and more. He found that he was chuckling, despite himself.

"Bravo," he said, bowing slightly to Lacey as he walked to the end of the counter and took the comically sugary, over-done drink from the older barista's hand. He had been interrupted in his attempt to ask her out, but maybe he would try again when he and his friends were ready to leave and there was not a growing line forming at the register she occupied. He looked at the coffee, piled high with a large dollop of whipped cream, the rainbow sprinkles already melting and staining the mound with messy streaks of color. He looked at the woman who had handed him the cup and asked, "Do you think I could have another cup to pour all this extra...stuff into?"

The barista nodded, searched behind the counter, and handed him a smaller, cardboard cup. "You asked her for her favorite drink, right?" she asked knowingly.

"My mistake," Bobby said and began tipping his macchiato into the smaller vessel to try and siphon off the whipped cream and nodules of sugar to make the beverage at least somewhat palatable.

Something fell onto the counter with an audible bang, and both Bobby and the barista looked down, surprised. At first what they were looking at didn't make any sense, but realization dawned on Bobby with a sick, sour kind of dread.

Without intending to, without the thought having ever even crossed his mind, Bobby had snap-frozen the contents of the coffee cup. The whipped cream and brown liquid had dumped out in a solid cylinder of ice, glistening with frost and emitting curls of vapor that snaked across the counter.

"What in the world..." he heard the barista mutter, then her eyes darted up to look into his. Bobby saw something there that made him instantly anxious. An understanding. A suspicion. She was already on her way to putting it together.

"What was that?" he heard Lacey call from behind her register. She leaned out to look, her view of Bobby's side of the counter obscured by a display case of pastries and cookies.

Bobby glanced over his shoulder to the table where his fellow X-Men sat. While the rest of the coffee shop continued to buzz with the usual summer afternoon vibe, Scott, Kitty, Kurt, Rogue, Jubilee and Roberto had gone silent, each sitting with eyes fixed on him with varying degrees of worry, ignoring their own food or drinks. Scott raised his hands palms up and vigorously shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, _"What are you doing, idiot?"_

The older barista frowned. He could see it was a matter of seconds before that ugly, inflammatory word popped into her head to offer its explanation for the strange, impossible occurrence.

_Mutant_.

All she needed to do was point her finger, shout that word, and just like that, Bobby's summer would be ruined all over again. If she didn't cause a full-blown panic at the coffee shop, Professor Xavier would nevertheless almost certainly hear about the incident some way or another. Even if she said nothing, there was still the infuriating chance that one of his companions would act as informants to the Professor on his behalf.

_Well that's certainly not going to happen_.

Without stopping to formulate a real plan, Bobby simply scooped the frozen mass of coffee up in one hand, shoved it back into the cup, and resumed holding it as casually as possible.

"Nothing," he said, pasting a plastic, artificial smile onto his mouth, willing himself not to make further eye contact with the older barista, "I just banged my foot on the bottom of the counter!"

"No," the older barista began, her eyes narrowing with suspicion, "He-"

"Has to go!" Bobby interrupted as loudly and forcefully as he could without shouting, still avoiding looking at the older woman, as though he could avoid the fallout of the situation if he could simply dodge her accusatory gaze. "Yeah, I've got a movie to catch. Thanks for the coffee though!"

"Ja," Bobby felt Kurt's tri-dactlyl hand clap onto his shoulder and subtly pull him towards the door, "We gotta run!"

"Thanks again," he heard Scott call from the front door of the coffee shop as he held it open for the others. Bobby felt Kurt's other hand grip his shoulder and gently but purposefully direct him towards the exit.

Just before he crossed the coffee shop's threshold, Bobby turned to look over his shoulder. Lacey was already busy with another customer at the register, but just for a moment, she glanced at him. And she smiled.

* * *

"What the hell, Bobby?"

Scott had directed all seven of them into the alley behind the building the coffee shop occupied. Light rain from the night before still pooled in dips and potholes in the pavement where sunlight had not yet hit. The rank odor of used coffee filters and molding baked good seeped out of the stained dumpsters. Bobby walked to one and opened it, throwing the frozen drink inside.

"I know, right?" he smiled. "Ten bucks down the tubes for that sugar-covered monstrosity. I haven't felt that burned by losing ten dollars since I saw the last Adam Sandler movie."

"It's not funny," Scott insisted. "You know how delicate things are right now. You can't just go flashing your powers to impress some girl. The days of using our powers for kicks are so far in the past you can find them in a history book."

Bobby's face dropped suddenly as he looked at each of the present X-Men in turn. "Wait, is that what you think I did?"

"Um, hello," Kitty said, "It's what we _know_ you did. You were at a level-five flirt factor, snowflake."

"No, no, no," Bobby rolled his eyes, then faltered. "Well, yeah, I was doing that. But the frozen coffee and the smooth moves I was putting on her were unrelated." He couldn't help but grin at Kurt, who smiled back despite himself.

"Then what were you doing?" Scott asked, growing visibly annoyed that he could not retain control over the conversation.

"It was an accident," Bobby brushed the air with his hand, trying to dismiss the matter by use of a physical gesture. "My powers goofed for a minute. I froze the drink. So what?"

"An accident?" Jubilee asked incredulously. "Bobby, you don't have power-related accidents."

"Not ever," Roberto agreed, eyeing him suspiciously.

It was true enough, they all knew. Ever since he had come to the mansion and joined the X-Men, Bobby had been vocal in his pride for the amount of control he had over his abilities. It had never been bragging, per se, but he had made more than his share of puns and friendly jokes at the expense of his teammates as they sometimes struggled to get a handle on their emerging powers.

"I'm allowed a slip up every now and then." Bobby raised his hands up as though to surrender, his usual light-hearted and jovial manner feeling less and less adequate to deal with the full-blown interrogation it seemed his friends were bent on delivering him. The tiniest spark of frustration flickered in his gut.

Scott sighed roughly, placing one hand on his waist and rubbing his temple with the other.

"No you're not, Bobby," he said. "None of us are. Mutants are _out _now, and there are people lining up to challenge our right to walk around without a ID tag stapled through our ears. You have to be more responsible for yourself. You have to be smarter than that. If you're not careful you can-"

"What?" Bobby snapped, surprising even himself. "I could hurt somebody, Scott? Let's review the facts, just for kicks, okay? I froze a coffee, harming no one but the coffee, which I think we all know doesn't exactly fair poorly in ice form anyway. You on the other hand, have a cosmic fire-hose of death attached to your eyeballs, held at bay at all times by, _wait for it_, a pair of _sunglasses_. Do you want to restart that part about responsibility?"

"Hey, hey, hey," Kitty jumped in, clearly just as confused as the rest of the X-Men at how quickly Bobby had let the conversation become personal and heated. "Let's all just chill for a minute."

Scott, it seemed, was in no mood to be chilled, and visibly bristled at Bobby's words. "What? You want me to go out with a steel plate bolted over my eye sockets?"

"Not anymore than I want six people jumping on my ass whenever I have a little lapse in concentration!"

"We're not jumping on your ass, we're trying to keep everyone safe," Scott retorted. "Including us, including humans, and especially including yourself."

Bobby was ready to let loose with his own reply, but suddenly fell silent, his eyes narrowing, his lips thinning in suspicion as he eyed Scott.

"You know, don't you?" he asked.

Scott looked immediately uncomfortable, and the puffing, heated look his body had taken on seemed to deflate suddenly as all the steam of the heated exchange left him at once.

_Yep. He knows. The Professor told him what went down in the lab._

As much as it did not surprise him, Bobby felt wounded and insulted by the secrecy of it. If they believed Bobby was a danger to himself, if they did not think he was healthy, why let Scott in on the circumstances of the laboratory accident? And if they believed there was not danger, why instruct the X-Men's leader to keep an eye on him.

"Know what?" several of the other X-Men asked practically in unison, all turning to look at Scott.

"It's not important," Scott frowned. "What we're talking about here and now is simple practicality and safe-"

"Hey," Bobby said, raising a hand, "Save it man. I don't know if you ever realized this, Scott, but you're not anyone's father here. You're not an instructor. You're not Professor Xavier. And when I'm not wearing an 'X' on my chest, you're not in charge of keeping tabs on me, despite what the Professor or Hank might tell you."

"What are you saying, Bobby?" Scott asked, the previous vigor in his speech all but evaporated.

"I'm saying get off my ass and stay off, Summers."

The silence that filled the alley was almost a living, palpable thing. The other X-Men looked down, checked their watches or their phones, did anything to disengage from what had gone from a standard reprimand to an uncomfortable and disquieting exchange. Even Bobby was internally surprised at his own outbursts. He was a joker by nature. A class clown. It was a personae that he cultivated and genuinely enjoyed. But now? Now an anger, thick and cold, seemed to ooze out of him from somewhere in his stomach, burning into his veins with an alien intensity. He couldn't determine what had brought him to this point, but he knew one thing for certain: He did not want to see Scott or his companions or anything even remotely related to the X-Men at this moment.

Bobby spun on his heel and stalked out of the alley, wanting suddenly to be gone of the place before Scott said anything more on the matter.

"I'll find a ride back to the mansion," he said, trying to inject a casual air into his tone, and failing. "You guys have fun."

He had only made it about two dozen feet, nearly back into the sunlight of the sidewalk in front of the building, when he felt a gloved hand touch his shoulder. He turned and saw the pale, icy stare of Rogue.

"Yeah?" he asked, halfway prepared for the southern girl to uncover the naked flesh of her hand and sap him of the energy to leave.

"Bobby," she said, her toned intentionally hushed, apparently not wanting her words to be overheard by the others. "Ah don't know what's going on with you, or what you and Scott are really butting heads over, but Ah saw your wallet."

At first, Bobby did not understand. What was she talking about? Then he remembered the wad of bills in the coffee shop, frozen nearly solid in his back pocket by no will of his own. He had thought only Lacey and himself had seen it.

"Ah know what it's like when your powers ain't doin' what you want," she said, her voice still low, barely more than a whisper. "Ah know better than most. If you need help, you need to go-"

"Back to the mansion," Bobby finished, frowning. "Rogue, I just wasted two weeks of my summer there. Believe me, that's the last thing I need."

He had thought his tone was not as scornful as he felt it could have been, but by the slightly spurned look on Rogue's face, that was not entirely the case.

"Look," he sighed, "I know I'm being a little bit of an ass, but you have to believe me when I say I've got it under control, okay?"

Without waiting to hear her reply, Bobby turned again to leave.

"If you'll excuse me," he called back, "I'm gonna go pester that barista until she gives me her phone number."

Rogue sighed as she watched him go, and looked at the hand that she had placed on his shoulder. The glove had a thin sheen of frost over the palm and fingertips, and her digits inside had gone nearly numb from the cold. She wiped the traces of ice away and walked back to join her comrades.

_**A/N: Wow. Finally updated this one.**_

_**I changed the title, you might notice. 'Frozen Summer' was always just a placeholder and a bit stale sounding to me. I also made some adjustments to the opening chapter. Enjoy!**_


End file.
